


Protective Instincts

by divingforstones



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Angst, But James with someone else, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Surveillance, Undercover As Gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divingforstones/pseuds/divingforstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Well, he has a point, Robbie reflects, left by himself to contemplate the river. Robbie doesn’t know what he’s getting so bent out of shape about. This should be no skin off his nose and it’s not like it's an assignment James asked for. It’s not like James wanted a new partner. It’s just not much fun having your sergeant effectively taken off you, is it?"</i><br/> </p><p>James goes undercover-as-gay with a different partner, leaving Robbie to provide surveillance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Protective Instincts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ComplicatedLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComplicatedLight/gifts).



> To wish a happy birthday to ComplicatedLight, who is so generous with her time, talents and encouragement in the Lewis fandom. 
> 
> And with many thanks to Lindenharp for helpful feedback and to wendymr for such very encouraging beta services and for lovely suggestions for the epilogue.

Robbie’s had more than enough of this for today. He eyes his sergeant across their office. “Pint?”

James, his head lifting from his own paperwork, looks rather pleased at the prospect. Because that one word heralds a welcome shift into what usually quietly develops into a shared evening, these days. But James is prevented from responding by his desk telephone, cutting in between them and their mutual contemplation of that.

It’s Innocent’s PA, it transpires, and James is being summoned to his Chief Superintendent’s office, forthwith. She’s obviously not divulged what the summons is in connection with but, judging from the fleeting set of expressions that pass across James’s face, Robbie’s sergeant may have a minor misdemeanour or two to consider.

Robbie, amused by those facial contortions, in contrast to the polite murmurs of assent into the phone, waits until the call ends, then offers cheerfully, “Rather you than me.” He grins in response to James’s grimace that’s most definitely aimed at him this time, and resigns himself to one more assault on this backlog of bureaucracy. It’s insidiously stacked up on their desks over the last couple of weeks while they’ve been out of the office, chasing down leads on back-to-back cases. His sergeant slings on his suit jacket and lopes off.

He’s gone an age.

It takes sufficiently long that it becomes a bit perturbing. It obviously isn’t case-related or Innocent would have requested the pleasure of Robbie’s company too. But when a notable inroad has been made in Robbie’s in-tray, James’s continued absence passes from irksome to vaguely unsettling and Robbie begins to wonder if this isn’t something he might have preferred to sit in on. Although—ah, there’s that unmistakeable footfall approaching. He feels his expression clear as James reappears in the doorway. His peace of mind has barely been restored, though, before it’s threatened again.

Because James comes back in and, most unusually, clicks the door shut behind him. But he says nothing. He just heads back over to his desk and starts the process of reanimating his computer.

Robbie frowns again, trying to make sense of this disparate set of clues. Something’s rattled his sergeant. And he’s trying not to show it. But his instinct is to seek privacy. And that’s sincerely not the best sign with James.

Robbie gazes across at him. It doesn’t take too long. His silent enquiry soon pulls James out of the absorbing pastime of watching his screen, which will be displaying nothing more fascinating than a polite exhortation that he wait. When he meets Robbie’s eyes at last, though, there’s something shuttered about his own gaze.

“Davis,” he says briefly.

All right. Davis is Chief Super at a neighbouring nick. He and Innocent have been known to clash over ambiguous matters of jurisdiction in a ritualistically polite fashion that leaves Robbie in little doubt that there’s not much love lost between them.

“He wants to—borrow me, as he put it.” James is looking distasteful at either the mere prospect or the phrasing. It’s hard to tell. “To do a covert operation for their Drugs Squad—pose as a buyer.”

Robbie is apparently not required to come up with questions in order for James to deliver this series of abrupt snippets of information, but there are a fair few questions forming in his head all the same. It’s just that sometimes trying to elicit information from James is like dealing with a skittish witness. You have to come at things a bit sideways. Robbie pushes the sheaf of paper in front of him aside and leans his elbows on his desk. James heaves a sigh and continues.

“They heavily suspect who they’re after, they just can’t get enough evidence to bring them in. There’s been a series of incidents with clubbers collapsing after taking some substance—it triggers seizures in some people who may perhaps have a vulnerability, nobody’s sure, but certainly it’s folk who haven’t been previously prone.”

“And why’s it so difficult for them? To get evidence?” Could be any reason. What Robbie really means is _why on earth are they involving you?_

“Because they seem to use different clubbers to push the stuff each time—well, they don’t push it, that’s the thing. It’s pricey stuff, it’s upmarket clubs, it’s all put in place covertly through a particular website with nothing said directly. But one of Davis’s new sergeants was set to pose as a buyer in a sting operation this Friday. He’d already laid the groundwork and made the initial approach online to see about someone getting the stuff for him. And now his father’s died suddenly abroad and he’s gone overseas on compassionate leave. They needed someone to pick it up, someone who matches his physical description, and they apparently don’t have anyone appropriate at their own nick. So he came to Innocent and described—well, me, apparently.”

“That’s a bit bloody risky. You can’t be his twin. Someone’ll work out you’re not him—”

“Oxbridge. Early thirties. Very tall. Blond. Athletic.” James grimaces. “That’s the description that he gave online. They seem very sure that if I go in for him they’ll approach me.” He sounds very final. They’ve obviously briefed him fully and convinced him of that. Robbie’s not half so sure, but he lets that one go for now. Because there’s something more going on here than James being asked to pose as a buyer in a club.

 James keeps looking across at Robbie but he’s sitting quite still. He looks a bit—defeated. There’s something he’s hating about all this, something he must have tried to fight and lost the battle.

But Innocent wouldn’t agree to let them use James for this purely against his wishes, regardless of the urgency of stopping the flow of this stuff onto the market, or how much pressure may be coming from any higher-ups about inter-force co-operation, or even about not losing the groundwork laid. Apart from anything else, James would be too risky a proposition to use if he was this uncomfortable with going undercover. They’d all know he could compromise his own safety and the whole operation if that was it.

It’s something else. And from the way that James keeps looking at Robbie, like he wants him to work it all out for himself, it’s something that James does not want to voice and Robbie is not going to like.

“And they’re asking you to do this by yourself? Go in undercover by yourself?”

“No.” And from the slight shift in James’s expression, Robbie knows he’s on to something here. “I’m to have—well, they’d already sounded out Colin, got him on board.”

“Colin?” asks Robbie blankly.

“Colin Bradshaw.”

Grainger’s sergeant. Well, not any more. Bradshaw’s just been promoted to Inspector. Although he’s so newly promoted that he hasn’t had a sergeant assigned to him yet. “I know who he is,” Robbie says shortly. “Why him?”

“Innocent insisted that it needed to be someone from here—not one of Davis’s officers, someone I’ve already worked with and will have enough time over the next few days to work out the details with, at least. But then Davis, and Blake—that’s the head of their Drug Squad who’s running this—they said no to that being—you.”

Robbie has a sudden ominous feeling that makes no sense—because this will be something procedural, after all—but he knows that it’s stemming straight from James’s stiff demeanour _._

“And why did they say no?”

“They don’t think it’d work, me being paired with you.”

“Work? Seems to have worked all right the past few years, wouldn’t you say?” Robbie’s trying to make light of it a bit now, to ease the tension he can see in James and feel gathering in himself, but it’s somehow not coming out light-hearted.

“I know.” He sounds rather stung.  Did the lad try to argue with them and earn himself a telling-off from Innocent for his pains? He is staunchly loyal, God knows. There are times when Robbie wonders what he’s ever quite done to earn such an unquestioning level of loyalty. He looks across at James, who’s just sitting there now, not quite meeting Robbie’s eyes, and he remembers something Laura had said to him, about James, back when she and Robbie had been going out.

_“He’d run into a burning building for you, wouldn’t he?”_

_“Hope so,”_ Robbie had joked back, “ _after he made me do that for him.”_

 _“Bad choice of phrase_ ,” she’d said, frowning briefly. “ _You know what I mean, though, Robbie, he’d_ _—well, he’d do anything for you, really.”_

It makes him soften his tone for the next question. He’s aware that he’s starting to pull rank here but whatever this is, it’s thoroughly thrown his sergeant and he needs to know what the problem is. “James. D’you want me to ask Innocent why I’m not providing back-up to my partner here?”

“No.” He sounds miserable. What in God’s name are they trying to make him do?

“Then out with it.”

“Bradshaw is my partner.”

“Your temporary partner,” Robbie says, abruptly, not quite liking the sound of that from James. There’s no reason, no reason at all to suppose that Innocent would reassign James to a newly promoted Inspector but all the same, those words are somehow enough to throw Robbie too.

 _“No._ In the assignment. He’s to be my partner.”

“Well, that’s just for the assignment, that _is_ temporary—”

“I don’t mean that. I mean we have to be _partners._ Undercover as partners. A couple.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“You and Bradshaw—”

“Yes.The drug is mainly marketed at gay men. It’s a drug aimed at—enhancing sexual pleasure.”

“Like Viagra?”

“Sort of. Gives you more of a high. Apparently. And that’s why they chose Colin. Because he’s older than me.”

He is older than James. Well in a prematurely grey, quite lean and groomed sort of way. Bradshaw is one of those blokes that makes turning fifty look like a good idea. “Why’s it matter if he’s older?”

“So—they just think it’s more believable if someone older is—” James apparently doesn’t want to finish that sentence. There’s no need for him to. Robbie can finish it himself. Seeking chemical assistance for sex with their younger partner. That’s what they mean. Robbie stares at him. “I don’t—It’s not my—” James is looking helpless.

“Put a lot of thought into this, haven’t they?” And yet all they can come up with is a load of flaming stereotypes.

“We’re not necessarily dealing with the most enlightened set of people here, sir. People pushing illicit drugs with fairly catastrophic side-effects. So if we play to their assumptions—it’s useful. Makes things more believable.”

Robbie can see the truth in that. But—hold on just a minute. Somehow James is still managing to evade the main issue here. “And any particular reason?” Robbie asks, and he can hear a tone swelling in his question that he doesn’t much like, but he doesn’t quite seem able to suppress it, “Why you can’t carry out this assignment with your regular _older_ partner?”

“I—”

“James, I will ask Innocent—I should be backing you up if they’re sending you into something here.” Christ, James has never even done proper undercover work before, has he? And this situation is making him beyond uncomfortable. But it’s beginning to dawn on Robbie that it’s not the actual assignment that’s making James so unhappy here. It seems to be this conversation.

“They said that we wouldn’t be a believable couple,” James informs his monitor, frowning at the centre of his screen.

Huh. “Oh, charming, that is,” Robbie tries to joke. Stupid bloody reason. Not enough to stop him backing James up on this. Although—he supposes they want a realistic-looking couple and obviously what people think, looking at him and this young, good-looking lad having a pint or a meal down the pub together, is that—well, they probably think Robbie’s his father, do they? It’s a thoroughly unwelcome thought and hot on its heels comes another one—“Bradshaw is only ten years younger than me,” Robbie estimates flatly.

“I know. I said.”

Oh, he did. James did argue about this? Robbie suddenly starts to relax just a little, relief spreading through him. He doesn’t really know why James challenging this is making him suddenly feel so much better—after all, as he just acknowledged to himself, he’d never doubt his sergeant’s loyalty. And James’s protest appears to have made bugger all difference. But somehow it’s just good to hear that James objected to Davis’s views.

“They didn’t listen. Obviously.” He still won’t look over at Robbie properly. “They said he has to be a bit older but not—well, apparently it’s ten years that make all the difference. They just—”

He’s come to a halt again but Robbie can see now that the only way past this is to get it all out in the open. “What’d they say, James, come on, lad. I’m sure I can take it.”

“They’re trying to see me as this young, blond, attractive, athletic thing.” _Thing?_ “You have to understand, they’re just sort of superimposing me on top of their sergeant now and I bet he’s younger than me—not that that _matters_ —but he’ll be better-looking.” _No, he’s probably not._ “And probably spends all his free time in a gym, God help me…”

“James.”

“So they’re seeing me as this stereotype and they’re saying it’s not credible that I’d be attracted to you.”

There’s a resounding silence in the office for a moment as Robbie, for some reason, has difficulty in thinking of the right lighthearted response to that. The sounds from the incident room, usually a white noise background to their conversation, start to drift in as the only sounds left. It makes the short moment while Robbie gropes to find the right words seem longer than it should. And James, having finally relinquished the information, is looking over at him now, waiting with an expression that Robbie can’t quite read.

“Well, I daresay they’re right,” is what comes out of Robbie’s mouth eventually.

There’s an instant look of displeasure on James’s face. “Innocent certainly didn’t think so, sir,” he says shortly. “Quite the opposite.” Then he starts to turn his focus back to that damned computer in a fairly final way, pulling a file towards him that Robbie knows full well he’s already finished with.

Robbie gets up and starts to pull on his suit jacket with very definite movements. “Pint?” he asks again, although he lets it emerge more like an order than a suggestion this time. James looks like he really can’t decide. Robbie decides to take the decision out of his hands. “Come on.”

James certainly looks like he could do with a drink.

 

===

 

“So what was Innocent’s view on all this, then?”

James is so intent on watching a clump of reeds on the far side of the river that Robbie glances over to check if a stray dead body has washed up there. Be just his luck, the way today has somehow deteriorated, to find that the evening pint that’s always so enjoyable when shared with James is suddenly the setting for a crime scene. But no. Just bristling reeds, moving in the breeze. Just the same vista they’ve sat and half-watched so many times before. So just another way for James Hathaway to avoid meeting his governor’s scrutiny. The bloke must miss his computer screen sometimes when they’re at the pub.

“I wasn’t meant to hear her,” James informs the opposite riverbank after a pause. “I must’ve left the door to her office a bit ajar after me, when I was sent to wait in the outer one.”

“Must you?” Robbie enquires, amused, but he belatedly takes in that James isn’t joking, that—is he actually upset about this bit too? What he heard? He is, isn’t he? What the hell has Innocent added to this?

“Yes. And Innocent said that, if he’d taken five minutes to watch us together, you and I, as she’d suggested, instead of just dismissing you based on your—age—then he’d have soon seen that we looked like a perfectly credible couple.”

“She said _what?”_

“That’s what she said. She’d obviously gone through it already with him and said it should be you. So she was annoyed with him for overriding _her_ opinion about _her_ officers in _her_ nick, obviously. She thought it should be you, too. But—you asked. And that’s what she said.”

“Anything else she had to offer?” Robbie finds himself asking, striving to keep a neutral tone, because he’d better know the worst of this too, what Innocent has said to bother James.

“She just repeated that he should have watched us interacting.” Bloody hell. And apparently Robbie has failed to keep his expression as neutral as he’s aiming for because James is now on his feet, reaching for the pint glass that, actually, Robbie wasn’t quite finished with yet, thank you very much.

“Look, sir.” Christ, he can sort of loom when he’s standing like that if he’s angry. And he is now; his face has stilled into a careful withdrawal of any expression that tells Robbie that yes, he’s angry. Robbie suddenly feels a moment of sympathy for those suspects in the interrogation room that crane back slightly to look at James Hathaway as he stands over them, intent on extracting the truth. But he’s not trying to extract anything from Robbie, quite the opposite. He’s got something to say.

“You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be irritated that they think we couldn’t be a couple, that I wouldn’t want someone like you. And then get annoyed again when Innocent says that we pretty much look like one to her.”

“I—” But Robbie doesn’t even know where to start.

“I’m the one who has to do this. I’m the one who has to stand there and listen to them discuss me as if they think they know things, or have a right to say—anyway, it’s all my problem, not yours, sir, so—another?” And he’s off, striding towards the pub, before Robbie can confirm or deny if he wants another pint or even begin to formulate a response to _that_ little speech.

Well, he has a point, Robbie reflects, left by himself to contemplate the river. Robbie doesn’t know what he’s getting so bent out of shape about. This should be no skin off his nose and it’s not like it’s an assignment James asked for. It’s not like James wanted a new partner. It’s just not much fun having your sergeant effectively taken off you, is it?

Must be the age thing, too. He must be more sensitive about his age than he’s let himself realise. Of course a bloke who looks like him, all wrinkles and grey hair, couldn’t be attractive to a good-looking, firm-bodied, lithe young thing like James—Jesus Christ, now he’s eyeing up his sergeant as he approaches the table again with that long-legged, athletic stride. He obviously badly needs that second pint James is carrying towards him.

And there’ll be no chance of discussing this any further anyway, judging from the friendly politeness of James’s whole demeanour as he rejoins Robbie. Once James goes all polite, there’s no hope of getting any bloody sense out of him about anything. Robbie suppresses a sigh. He’s got a distinct feeling of foreboding about this case. And it’s got nothing to do with drug-dealers.

 

===

 

“And where exactly were the two of _you_ this morning?” Laura is not happy.

Robbie had rather welcomed the opportunity to get out of his office this morning and pick up final results from her for one of those recently-closed cases. Things are still a bit off with James. Neither of them had really managed to settle into that second pint yesterday evening. It had all been a bit constrained. And neither of them had suggested staying on at the pub for a bite to eat in the end. The evening hadn’t progressed the way it usually did; it had come to a sort of an unsatisfactory end. And somehow everything from yesterday is still hanging over them now. James has been pleasant and abstracted this morning, and Robbie’s had enough of his desk already. Which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the week.

Heading over to the morgue and catching up with Laura had suddenly sounded like a pleasant break.

Except now he’s getting glared at in lieu of a greeting. “I was expecting you and instead I get Alan—”

“Thought you liked _Alan,”_ Robbie rejoins but his heart isn’t really in it.

“As someone to have the odd drink with, yes. As someone to attend an event we’re both interested in if neither of us are currently, attached, yes. As someone whose level of enthusiasm at an indecently early hour of the morning far surpasses my own—no.”

That does elicit a reluctant grin from Robbie. It’s the thought of Peterson taking rather too well to his unusual position of being first in line for a suspected murder. He must be sufficiently inexperienced that he’d been unable to read the cues about when it was really best to restrict himself to the professional courtesies with Laura until she came round a bit. But it’s also the realisation that Laura is actually choosier about who’s allowed near her corpses than who she’s willing to socialise with.

Apparently it’s not much of a grin Robbie’s produced, because she’s giving him an assessing look now. “And what’s got you so morose?”

“Being confined to desk duties while the Drugs lads take me sergeant for their own nefarious purposes. That should be my corpse, you know,” jokes Robbie in wounded tones. That doesn’t fool her either. Laura has a disconcerting habit of looking straight past his jocular front sometimes, right to the heart of the matter. Or what she decides is the heart of the matter.  She’s narrowing her gaze at him now in that way that often makes him picture her with her microscope.

“What d’you mean—they’ve taken James? He’s on some assignment with the drugs squad? And not you?” She’s trying to hone in on this. “Why James and not you?”

Robbie briefly outlines such details as he’d be at liberty to reveal to her about this—which aren’t many even if she has spent the bulk of her career now involved with the force. But he finds himself suddenly wanting to expand on why he was passed over for this case, his sense of grievance at this idiocy suddenly rising to the fore.

He’s expecting a ribbing at the mere prospect of him and nightclubs and Laura’s amusement at the thought of he and James posing as a couple. Or a reminder not to be so bloody touchy if he just doesn’t fit the bill for this case. He probably needs the wake-up call. But he doesn’t get any of that. Laura’s eyes are warm as she looks at him without speaking.

“Look,” she offers, after a moment. “Some people have Jurassic attitudes, Robbie, you know that better than anyone—you must come up against it all the time, questioning people, their prejudices. And some people—they just persist in attaching labels to others and all the attributes they assume go with those labels. Gives them the illusion they’re more in control of their world. I mean—I know it’s easy to say and different when it’s you it’s aimed at. But you’re hardly looking for anyone else’s sanction, are you? You don’t have to let that sort of narrow worldview actually affect you and James.”

Her unexpected sympathy is quite a comfort to his rather rattled nerves. As he takes his leave and heads back up the stairs, he feels rather better. She’s right too. He shouldn’t let this case affect things with him and James in the way that it somehow is. Except—that’s not actually what she said, is it? Robbie’s feet slow of their own accord and he comes to a halt in the empty stairwell, replaying that conversation. That’s not what Laura said at all—she said— _you’re hardly looking for anyone’s else’s sanction, are you?_ Does Laura think that he was objecting to the whole idea that people think he couldn’t be a boyfriend for James, that he’d be too old for them to be a credible couple, does she think his problem with all this is—

Ah, hell. Where’d she even get that idea? He’ll have to go back down and—but here’s Peterson with his usual impeccable right-there-where-you-don’t-want-him timing, shouldering open the door at the top of the stairs. He’ll have to clear things up with Laura later. Although, as he greets Peterson briefly and moves aside to let him pass, it also occurs to him that that can’t be what Laura thought, that Robbie was thinking about actual age issues between he and James as an actual couple—or then she’d have seemed a whole lot more surprised, wouldn’t she?

When he gets back to their office, he’s greeted with the news that Innocent wants to see them both “at our earliest convenience,” says James resignedly. Which means now.

“Feel like you’re beating a path to her door this week, do you, lad?” Robbie asks mock-sympathetically.  Because James, after his extended ordeal with the powers that be, yesterday evening, really has quite a put-upon air about him now, and it’s only Tuesday. Robbie stands in the doorway, watching, as James goes through the process of saving whatever he’s been occupying himself with while waiting for Robbie’s return, and suddenly finds himself grinning down at his sergeant. James, glancing up suddenly, catches the grin and looks enquiring before the corners of his mouth start to twitch a bit and he gives in, grimacing back up at Robbie in rueful amusement.

Nothing like having to deal with Innocent together to suddenly put things back to rights between them.

 

===

 

“Ah, gentlemen,” Innocent greets them. Lord, she’s in an upbeat mood. That means she’s on some sort of mission. James, Robbie notices, also knows well enough to look faintly alarmed as they take their seats.

“I’m sure your good sergeant appraised you of how he’ll be rendering his services to our friendly neighbours—all in the name of inter-force co-operation.” Robbie nods. It seems the safest option, since he’s not sure she’s actually half as pleased about all this as she’s making out, and until he works out where she’s going with this. “It led, as you can appreciate, to a fair amount of discussion about both Inspector Bradshaw’s and Sergeant Hathaway’s abilities and competencies,”—and why’s she emphasising their ranks?—“and I must say, to me, it only reinforced that now that Bradshaw has passed his Inspector’s with flying colours—”

She pauses. The lack of response she gets from either of them makes her eyebrows lower briefly at them. “Well, when the next vacancy arises, Sergeant Hathaway is, in my opinion, the next most-able candidate in the station…” And she lets her opinion hover above them, rather ominously.

James, perhaps trying to come up with an entirely novel way to avoid this topic, stays silent. Innocent, who seriously can’t be half as—innocent—about James’s reluctance as she’s making out here, looks definitely displeased. God, why this week? Why does she have to drop this particular topic between them right now, when Robbie is still trying to disperse all the strange tension this assignment of James’s has somehow thrown between them?

Silence never deters Innocent. She’ll just proceed onwards in her deceptively-pleasant fashion until one of them is forced to engage with her. “If you could both give it some further consideration, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter—I suppose what’s certainly brought it to the fore of my attention is the realisation that I could safely assure them there was no need to commit any further resources to this—their own drugs boys will be at a safe distance on the night but you’ll appreciate they won’t show their faces unless necessary—”

Hold on, what’s this? “But James has never done undercover work before, ma’am,” Robbie says abruptly.

James looks at him, confused.

“Well, no.” Innocent says and stops. Her gaze goes from him to James and back again as she seems to consider this. Or else she’s considering what exactly Robbie’s not saying. Robbie suddenly rethinks, too late, the wisdom of expressing this particular thorny issue here. It’s certainly valid but—

“If you have any reservations about Sergeant Hathaway’s ability to handle this, Lewis?” Innocent says slowly. “If there are any areas of competence he needs to work on that I’m unaware of, relevant to this case?”

Robbie knows what she’s really asking. Whether she’s wrong about the level of supervision needed here. He tries immediately to neutralise this.

“No, ma’am, just—well, no harm having back-up there, anyway, is there, a more senior officer?” But bloody Bradshaw is, inconveniently, James’s senior officer, the same rank as Robbie now. That won’t wash. “Someone who knows Hathaway and how he is on the job—” God, that sounds like James has deficiencies on the job and Robbie covers for him. James is looking worse than confused now. It’s making it hard to work out how to put this across. “No, look—”

But Innocent’s phone cuts him off and she grimaces at the display and then raises her eyebrows in an anything-that-can’t-wait gesture of impatience at Robbie’s prevaricating. They both rise, accustomed to this, and take their leave, James not quite meeting Robbie’s eyes. Robbie hopes Innocent’s expression has less to do with her considering his ill-chosen words and more to do with the prospect of conversing with whoever is sufficiently hard to put off that she permits their call to interrupt meetings of her own devising.

It’s a silent walk back to their office. Robbie is trying to work out quite how that went so wrong and James, following slightly behind him—well, James is just quiet.  As soon as they reach the relative privacy of their own space, Robbie comes to a halt, turning to face him.

“Look. James—”

But James is reaching past him for his suit jacket, talking over him, “Just heading out to pick up lunch, sir. Your usual?” His tone is perfectly casual. It’s the closest he’ll come to an outright refusal to listen to what Robbie wants to say.

“Yeah,” Robbie tells him. Maybe letting him go is the best idea. James can hardly think Robbie has any doubts about his ability, after all, can he? He can’t doubt that. Maybe it’ll have blown over by the time he gets back. Robbie might have been imagining that he looked that bothered there, due to his own feelings of awkwardness. And besides, Laura has just appeared in their office doorway now, so—

“Can I get you anything, Doctor? Lunch run,” explains James.

“I’m fine,” Laura says, smiling at him. But her smile fades as she turns to Robbie once James has left. “Everything all right?” she asks. “He looks a bit upset.” Oh. Well, there’s that hope scuppered.

“I questioned his ability,” Robbie confesses. “With Innocent.”

“Poor James.” Laura’s face is lively with sympathy. “He messed up somehow on this undercover case, did he? And he’d have so wanted it to go well. Well, he’ll know you wouldn’t do it lightly, Robbie. Can’t have been easy for you, either, bringing whatever it was to Jean’s attention. He’ll recognise that too once he cools down. God, it must be complicated working with someone and being their boss when you’re—”

“No,” Robbie breaks in, rather helplessly, because he seems to be somehow perpetuating this idea of James being incompetent now. “James hasn’t done anything wrong. I don’t actually _have_ any problems with his ability—”

“Then why did you do it?” Laura enquires, looking at him, bewildered. It’s a bloody reasonable question.

“I didn’t actually mean it to come out like that.”

“And you didn’t clear it up?” she asks in patent disbelief.

“It sort of got away from me. And now—well, he wouldn’t want me to make a fuss of it, would he—”

“God, I wouldn’t ever have liked my supervisor telling our Head of Department that they had doubts about my abilities,” Laura informs him. “Particularly if it came out of the blue because it wasn’t actually _true…”_

“He doesn’t care _that_ much what Innocent might think,” Robbie protests, guilt lending fuel to his frustration because he knows full well now that he can’t leave this to settle itself. But he also feels somehow painted into a corner here—he _doesn’t_ want James left only to the supervision of some wet-behind-the-ears Inspector who might call things wrong here, might not see the risks he’s letting his junior partner run, the signs where James might head into trouble—even though he also thinks that James would be well able to move up to an inspector’s position himself, so why’s it matter, actually, if Bradshaw hasn’t got that much experience?

Well, Bradshaw just isn’t—he's not someone Robbie would choose to trust James to, for some reason. Although—who would he even choose? It’d be a very short list—

“So you wouldn’t have minded Morse questioning your ability to Strange, in front of you, would you?” Laura is enquiring. Robbie knows a rhetorical question when he encounters one. And, no, he wouldn’t have much liked that at all. Morse, though, never had. For all his impatience with Robbie, and all his put-downs, many of which Laura had been privy to, Morse had certainly taken exception to anyone else casting doubt on his sergeant’s abilities.

Laura, come to think of it, had often taken exception to Morse’s put-downs on Robbie’s behalf too. And not solely to liven up her day by annoying Morse. That was generally just a welcome side-effect in her book. She’s always tended to rather ignore chains of command and just get riled by anyone speaking down to anyone else. Robbie knows full well that he’s in the wrong here if she’s berating him for mistreating James. She seems to see that she’s hit her mark. Not that that’ll stop her from finishing speaking her mind. Laura is right fond of James.

“You might want to actually take my report with you, next time you come to collect it,” she informs him, dropping it on his desk. “And bear in mind,” she offers, as an obvious parting shot, “Although I think James would care rather more about Jean’s official assessment of him than you want to allow for—if he does a job, he seems to want to do it well—he’ll certainly care a good deal about what _you_ think.”

That has a ring of truth to it. It’s not a very pleasant twenty minutes Robbie passes after she leaves him to his thoughts, but at least by the time James reappears, bearing lunch, he’s found a way to broach the topic. The truth seems the best option. This is still James, after all; surely they can sort this out even with this oddly unsettling week they’re now enduring. He waits until James is sitting at his desk, shifting his papers about a bit and apparently ignoring his own lunch.

“Look, that with Innocent there—I didn’t actually mean to raise questions about your abilities.” James sends an immediate question at him with his eyes. _Then why did you do it?_ says Laura’s voice in Robbie’s head. Robbie gives his head a slight shake. He can’t deal with both of them at once. “I don’t have any doubts that you’ll do a good job with this assignment, okay? It’s your instincts I’m concerned about. No, wait,”—as James’s eyebrows lift in obvious offence—“for self-preservation, I mean. You have a habit of disregarding your own safety when someone else seems to be at risk.” _Grabbing for a rifle that a desperate woman has levelled at herself springs to mind._

“That’s the job,” James offers, but he’s frowning slightly now, perhaps considering this.

“Well, it’s a personal call, how much you risk of your own safety in those situations. And you sometimes seem to err on the side of—well, personally, the side I wish you wouldn’t. That’s the extent of it—all I was trying to get across to her. ”

“Okay.” And somehow just saying that has made an immediate difference to James. Robbie eyes him. He does look better. He’s actually reaching for his sandwich now.

Robbie’s relieved to see it. “I know you’ll do fine. I’ll make it a bit clearer to Innocent, okay? That I’m well aware you’re up to this. And, look—” It seems only fair to say, in the circumstances, after he’s put down the lad. Only fair to acknowledge what Innocent said, even if it’s a bit of a wrench for Robbie to even contemplate it. Well, it’s pure selfishness on Robbie’s part, really, not to and Laura, he’s quite sure, would be giving him fearsome looks if he doesn’t—“What Innocent said about going for promotion—well, she’s right about that, you are the best candidate for the next vacancy. It might be worth thinking about?”

But the shutters have come right back down again. “Will give it my due consideration, sir,” James says politely. Oh, bloody hell, they’re back to politeness.

“I don’t mean—”

“There’s an email just come through from Innocent, sir,” James cuts him off, glancing at his screen. “Probably regarding this, don’t you think?”

Robbie moves back over to his own desk to read it since his sergeant doesn’t seem too inclined to offer up the contents for discussion. He soon sees why. It turns out that both Robbie and Grainger are to provide closer back-up on this. It’s been arranged that they can join the security team on Friday evening in their office at the club. And it’s an undeniable relief, straight off, that he’ll be close by, watching out for James from a decent vantage point. Well, several decent vantage points, no doubt. Because of course a place like that has a decent surveillance set-up.

He just wishes he could decipher James’s expression as he leans back in his chair and reads the email silently himself. But regardless of what he’s just said to James, and he will of course let Innocent know that he doesn’t doubt James’s general competence here—well, Robbie is not about to back down far enough to say that this is unnecessary. Even if it might look like he still lacks confidence in his sergeant, even it means making things that bit harder between he and James for a few days—well, he can’t head off home on Friday night and just leave James to Bradshaw’s devices in this club, can he now?

By the time they reach the end of the rather wearisome day this has become, Robbie knows he’ll have to do something here. There’s a polite chasm gently widening between him and James and it’s making Robbie feel thoroughly out of sorts. Surely they can sort this out. By not actually mentioning it, obviously, but just—well, get back on track and let it all settle and assume its correct proportions. “Pint?” he suggests across the space between them.

“Oh.” James looks rather taken aback. “Colin was texting me earlier—he wants me to go for a drink with him—come with us?”

“Ah. No—you’re all right. Give you both a chance to get more at ease with other, I suppose.” Robbie finds he doesn’t actually want to sit in on that.

“No, come. Colin wants to go that new bar on George Street and —”

Oh, does Colin, now? Well, Robbie won’t be muscling in on that. Some place for Oxford’s young trendy crowd where he’d feel like a fish out of water, no doubt. But, as luck would have it, as he and James exit the station building together, to go their separate ways for the evening, there’s Bradshaw coming back in.

“Won’t be long,” he says to James and nods at Robbie.

Robbie, who’s never been able to put his finger on quite why he doesn’t warm to the bloke, feels James’s eyes on him and makes an effort. “You’ve heard you’ll have a bit closer back-up, Friday night? Grainger and myself?”

Bradshaw hadn’t yet, as it turns out. He doesn’t exactly look enamoured at the prospect. James is still looking at Robbie, with a bit of an appeal in his expression. He doesn’t actually want Robbie to join them for this drink, does he? Bradshaw certainly doesn’t, Robbie is rapidly realising.

“Well, better get a move on now, or you’ll be missing your band practice later,” Robbie jokes to his sergeant. James’s schedule is that unpredictable that his group obviously find ways to manage in his absence. But James, maybe in response to the leeway they allow him, doesn’t miss practice for anything less than murder. Literally. He won’t be making a night of it with Bradshaw, Robbie knows.

“What d’you play?” Bradshaw asks.

James briefly explains, in the way he does when this comes up, about his guitar and the nature of his group. But it turns out that Bradshaw not only actually understands what James is on about when he describes the type of music he plays, he’s mentioning festivals now that James has actually been to. And suddenly there’s that rare, genuine smile of delight from James and it’s aimed straight at Colin Bradshaw.

Well, just as well they have things in common, of course, Robbie tells himself as he gets into his car to head home to his evening in his silent flat, leaving James and Bradshaw, who seem in no hurry now, talking animatedly in the car park. Better for James. And better to let the two of them go off and get this over with anyway and then maybe they can all have a bit of a break from thinking about this ruddy case until Friday comes around.

 

===

 

“Morning—” Robbie wants things straight back to normal this morning now, after the oddly unsettled evening he’d spent at home by himself. He’d almost landed up feeling that he’d cut off his nose to spite his face by turning down James’s offer to join him and Bradshaw for their drink. There’d been no need at all to be so churlish with the lad when he’d asked. He should’ve just gone with them and then he wouldn’t somehow have been picturing—well, James smiling like that at Colin Bradshaw, that’s what he’d found himself picturing.

But James has got one of those energy drinks on his desk this morning in place of his usual coffee. He clocks Robbie’s gaze going straight to it and looks up at him, but with that wary, rather withdrawn look again that Robbie feels he’s seen far too much of already the past couple of days.

“Stayed out quite late—well, I hadn’t planned to, but—”

Robbie suddenly hasn’t got the energy for this somehow. “And you got your cover all sorted out with him, did you?”

“I thought so, but Colin doesn’t think so yet—”

Oh, so they’ll be meeting up again for more of the same. Well, there isn’t actually _that_ much to work out, as Robbie feels like saying. So last night obviously turned into much more of a social thing. Well, that’s their choice. Of course. Robbie should still make the effort to be conciliatory, anyway. “I suppose—” he offers, “you haven’t done undercover work before, so—”

“Why d’you keep _saying_ that—have you?” And James thinks that that’s a rhetorical question. There’s the slightest underlying challenge to it that Robbie can detect full well, because James thinks he’d know if Robbie had gone undercover, that it would have come up by now. He thinks Robbie would have referred to it by now in reference to another case.

“Yeah,” Robbie informs him, settling on the edge of his sergeant’s desk now despite the lack of welcome in James’s demeanour. He does look right tired, actually, now that Robbie has a closer look at him. Not hungover, just weary. “As a cricket player.”

“As a what?” Well, that’s got his attention at least.

“A cricket player.”

“You’re joking.” Fair enough, it doesn’t exactly sound like much excitement compared to what James will be at on Friday night. Robbie should perhaps have thought further back into the reaches of time and that stint in Vice in Newcastle. But—

“I don’t joke about cricket,” Robbie assures him.

James gives a rueful nod, knowing full well _that’s_ true. At particular times of the year, he’s always been subjected to the Test commentary, a low barely-decipherable murmur on the radio in their office if they aren’t on a case. Well, Robbie, who had had to become inured to full-blown operas and concertos in his own sergeant days, hadn’t actually realised that he was subjecting James to anything.

Robbie had assumed that his own indulgence now was merely a low comfortable background noise to his partner across the room in comparison to that. Until the afternoon that James, with a polite “Sir, d’you mind if I…”, had suddenly risen and come over to lean over Robbie’s shoulder. And with a few rapid clicks he’d set up for Robbie this Guardian webpage that gave automatic minute by minute updates. Bloody handy, that.

Robbie, reaching to switch off the suddenly-defunct radio, had gazed across the office at his sergeant, who was resettling to his own work with a distinctly relieved demeanour now, Robbie could see. He’d been much taken aback by the potential of this new secret pleasure—catching up on exactly what you’d missed whenever you wanted? Why hadn’t he known about this? And he’d been accosted by a vivid memory of being caught in his own sergeant days trying to surreptitiously catch the Test scores, risking and incurring Morse’s ire by tuning out his inspector’s radio from his beloved classical music station.

But he’d also been hit by an equally strong realisation that James would never have betrayed that Robbie’s radio, which had been murmuring away for a day and a half already this time, was putting him on edge, if he hadn’t suddenly come up with this solution for Robbie.

Christ, no wonder it’s so bloody difficult to ever stay annoyed at his sergeant. Not that James has done much to get annoyed about, he reminds himself. But somehow Robbie’s irritation just keeps flaring at odd moments now. Must be partly the tension of waiting for Friday and all the unwelcome palaver it’ll bring watching over James and Bradshaw together. Robbie rather yearns for a normal week when a Friday would mean he could look forward to the end-of-week relief of that quiet pint with James. Just James.

“Why would you go undercover _playing cricket_?” James is shaking his head. He’s leaning back in his seat, looking up at Robbie properly now, though. “I mean—what were you investigating—match fixing?”

“An international drug smuggling ring and multiple murder case, actually.”

“A drug smuggling—sorry—on a _cricket_ team?”

“Aye,” Robbie says firmly.

“And is there honey still for tea?” mutters James, bemused.

Robbie gives a slight snort at that. He’d done that poem in school, too. “Don’t you be pretending I’m spoiling all your idyllic illusions. You just like that one cause it’s the nobbiest poem ever about studying at Cambridge,” he accuses, heading back to his own desk now that he seems to have jolted them back out of that polite quagmire.

“Well…” James demurs.

But it’s a rather better day after that, even if there’s not much conversation between them. And even if James actually seems as thankful as Robbie feels when Robbie suggests knocking off a bit early for once and heading home. He’s muttering something about a quiet night in not doing any harm as he goes through the ritual of shutting things down for the evening. Fair enough. So Robbie isn’t about to try and suggest a mid-week pint to put things right then, after all. He does feel a fair bit better himself, though, as he heads homeward, compared to yesterday. But then all that means is that he’s taken completely by surprise when he gets in the following morning.

 

===

 

“You still suffering the after effects of Tuesday night? Must be getting old yourself.” Because James, if anything, looks worse this morning. He has that translucent look about him that he gets when he’s really tired and his eyes are quite dull—is he actually all right?

James, who was poking rather half-heartedly at his keyboard when Robbie arrived, looks up at him. “Colin rang me—we went to a club."

“You did what?” asks Robbie blankly. Is Bradshaw champing at the bit, resentful enough of having Robbie insert himself into this case that he actually waited to get James to himself and they headed for this club, just the two of them? Christ.

“Not the club we’re going to on Friday—” James seems to grasp the source of Robbie’s shock. “Colin just wanted to—work on our cover a bit more. Practice. Make sure we’re convincing on the night.” He rolls his eyes a bit and then lets his glance flick up to Robbie’s, an invitation to share the humour of it.

Oh, so he’s comfortable enough with all this coupling with Bradshaw now that he sees the humour in it? Well, that’s good, of course. And what they were actually doing is having another off-duty night out together, James and Colin, not pursuing the case further. That’s obviously a relief, isn’t it? Except it’s not.

“Look, James—sometimes you have to watch the boundaries—well, you know your cover doesn’t exactly have to be too deep for this case, don’t you?  It’ll just be the one night—”

There’s the strangest look on James’s face. He seems about to say something, looking up at Robbie. Then he looks beyond Robbie at the open door and seems to change his mind. “Yes, sir,” he says agreeably. And completely unconvincingly, to Robbie’s ears _._

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to—”

“I’m not,” James assures him in a rather final tone.

There doesn’t seem to be much to say in response to that somehow. Robbie suddenly finds he badly wants to drop this whole topic, he doesn’t want to face up to what he suspects has started to happen here but, God, if the suspicions forming in his mind now are even half-true, there’s something that James needs to grasp for his own protection here. So he tries again.

“Working undercover, it’s a strange sort of a thing, you can get kind of tied up in what you’re pretending, especially when it involves building relationships with folk that you’ll still have contact with after this. It can be hard to keep the lines clear in your head—”

“I think Colin really does have a handle on all that, sir. He’s got every single aspect of this covered. Really.” James seems to be barely suppressing his frustration. What the hell has _he_ got to get so touchy about? Robbie’s the one who has to sit on the sidelines of this case and watch while—well, personal feelings aside, this is part of his job as James’s governor so—

“And on that note, shouldn’t that be Inspector Bradshaw to you?” He aims for a joking reminder, James and Bradshaw having been on first name terms as fellow-sergeants for a few years, but it may miss its target slightly, because James looks taken aback now.

“No,” he says.

“No? He does outrank you now, you can’t still go around the station addressing him as Colin.” _Much as he might want you to._ This is dodgy ground too. Because Bradshaw may be older than James, but joining the police wasn’t his original choice of career either. He came in on the graduate entry programme, just as James did. He’s well-educated, intelligent and has that certain sort of cultured quality about him that James has. He has, actually, quite a bit in common with James. It’s no wonder, really, that thrown together now, they’re suddenly discovering that together.

But Bradshaw had come into the force after James had, had reached sergeant rank very shortly after Robbie’s return to Oxfordshire and gone straight into that position as Grainger’s sergeant that Innocent had intended to put James in, after that debacle with Knox, if James hadn’t gone and asked for Robbie instead—and Bradshaw is now rising up the ranks much as James was clearly intended to do. But didn’t. James has stayed as Robbie’s sergeant and has apparently no issues at all with Bradshaw outpacing him in the promotion stakes. Whereas if James had become Grainger’s bagman, would Grainger have got to the bottom of James’s reluctance around this whole issue, and seen him through OSPRE? Would James be the one who would have taken this recent promotion? Robbie can’t quite get rid of the thought that he might.

Grainger, he realises, has somehow succeeded in looking after his own sergeant’s interests in a way that Robbie hasn’t.

“I need to be in the habit of calling him Colin,” James explains, into Robbie’s silence. “I think even Innocent would agree that the odd slip-up at work this week might be worth it to achieve a more convincing relationship between us for tomorrow.”

“You seem to be achieving that, all right,” Robbie acknowledges shortly. “Taking to building your cover rather well, aren’t you now?”

James looks back at him and says absolutely nothing. Robbie isn’t in the mood for much more of this. He’s tried. James obviously doesn’t want to acknowledge what Robbie’s trying to warn him about here. He can be bloody stubborn sometimes and today it all feels like a futile effort. This morning’s set of bureaucracy isn’t going anywhere. It can wait for a bit. With the downturn that today has already taken Robbie could do with a coffee himself at this point. Or something. “Another?” he asks, briefly, giving a nod at the cardboard cup on James’s desk. And he leaves his silent sergeant to himself as he heads back out.

The worst of it here would be if Bradshaw isn’t seeing this the way James is, if James is reading something into it that’s only Bradshaw’s cover—Christ, Robbie’s not going to be responsible for his actions if there’s a hint of Bradshaw using James—but there isn’t really, is there? It’s all instigated by Bradshaw. It’s _Colin rang me_ and _Colin was texting me earlier._ It’s not one-sided. It’s both James and Bradshaw. And both of them should know better.

When he gets back to the office the only sign of James is a brief note on Robbie’s desk— _Gone to briefing with Drugs Squad._ He’d generally text something like that, not leave a note. Well, saves Robbie having to text him back, he supposes. Robbie doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or not that he’ll have headed off himself for the rest of the day by the time James gets back. There’s never any point heading back here to the nick once the bi-annual Area Meeting finally reaches a close but at this rate it should actually be a welcome break.

 

===

 

Robbie can’t really face another restless evening like this. It’s stupid—it’s just bloody hard to have things so churned up between the two of them. He’s been taken aback at just how disturbing it is to be at odds with James. And over something as daft as all this too—he doubts either of them could actually articulate what’s got them so strangely, disproportionately out of step this week over all these issues which should be so minor really.

He’s in his kitchen, intending to use a cold beer in an attempt to relax himself, when he finds himself staring at the keys he’d dropped on his kitchen counter earlier before half-heartedly sticking his dinner, such as it was, in the microwave—Oh, why not? He lifts the keys and heads for the door before he can have second thoughts. Maybe it’ll be easier away from the office. James won’t be out tonight, not with tomorrow looming so close now. Robbie’ll head over to his and just—join him. The way that James, often with the sketchiest of case-related excuses, turns up here at Robbie’s and just makes himself at home for a bit, brightening up the evening. Just because he hasn’t all this week, that doesn’t mean Robbie can’t.

By the time he reaches James’s street Robbie is already anticipating, with relief, the prospect of a good dose of normality between them. And he’ll have a gentle word with the lad about what he was trying to say earlier.

About getting too deep into things with Bradshaw when it’s just for a case.

He should try to find out what exactly is going on that he can’t put his finger on here—because James really just seems fairly unhappy this week. Robbie will voice his concerns properly this time in a way that doesn’t put James’s back up. Although that would be easier if he was actually clearer in his own mind about what exactly it is that he’s trying to get at here. He’s preoccupied enough with trying to work out what to say that it takes him a moment to process why exactly it’s proving harder than usual to find a space to pull in to on James’s narrow street.

Until Robbie realises that it’s because the space he habitually parks in near James’s building, in front of a house of carless students, is already occupied. By Colin Bradshaw’s car.

 

===

 

Robbie hasn’t slept particularly well.

It’s become hard to see how exactly he and James will quite get back to normal when James’s assignment is over. Somehow, everything that’s been stirred up has thoroughly disturbed that pleasant ease between them. Robbie’s never coped well with his sergeant keeping him in the dark about case-related matters that collide with James’s very private life. Not that this is Robbie’s case really. By now he’d give a lot to be able to wash his hands of the whole thing, it’s making him feel that low. And James—who must notice—is apparently too occupied with either tonight or Colin to quite react to that. He’s still rather quiet and a bit withdrawn today, and he keeps casting glances over at Robbie and saying nothing at all.

The same way he has a few times during the course of the week, come to think of it. Well, if he’s belatedly contemplating coming clean to Robbie he’d better find a way to do it himself. He’s been given more than enough opportunities now.

And quite frankly, Robbie doesn’t feel like being under anyone’s scrutiny at the moment. So it’s a relief in the early afternoon to send James off to collect a copy of a toxicology screen from Laura that’s somehow gone missing from another file he’s trying to finally close. It’s a relief on both counts, because he finds he doesn’t want to have that now-overdue conversation with Laura, after all. He doesn’t want to make it clear to her how he and James are very obviously not trying to pursue any sort of relationship. Not today. He has no desire to talk about that at all.

It’s a peculiar kind of a wrench, this—and a selfish one when it’s largely due to the prospect of losing James’s always-welcome company. He’s just become too used to having the lad there, right there whenever he might have a need for him, and sometimes when he doesn’t even know that he does. And it’s somehow worse James choosing another copper, an older man, which is something that Robbie had never really thought he’d—well, either way it’s a selfish attitude. He’ll have to make a real effort once this case is over to show James that it’s not his relationship with Bradshaw that’s the problem, it was only the undercover bit. He’ll have to make an effort to do that. It’ll get easier to deal with. A weekend away from all this might help. He can get a decent rest and talk some sense into himself.

There’s just tonight to get through first.

“Dr Hobson wasn’t there,” James informs him on his return. “Her assistant did mention they could’ve just sent this over if we’d called…” He’s looking at Robbie, a bit strangely. Robbie did actually want the report today—he reckons he could do with one less unfinished file on his desk during a week when being confined to the office and the bureaucratic end of things has somehow made him more tense and dispirited than it previously would have. But James’s look almost carries an accusation and he doesn’t particularly feel like explaining much at the moment.

“Thanks,” he says shortly. James doesn’t move. He stays standing in front of Robbie’s desk.

“About tonight—” Oh, God. But James has stopped abruptly there, probably at the look on Robbie’s face.

“Go on,” says Robbie.

James eyes him and then starts again, a bit less certain. “You don’t have to come. You’re tired and—look, I’m feeling pretty effectively supervised actually, sir, what with Colin—”

“Of course I’m still coming,” Robbie says flatly. “Not up to you, sergeant.”

James’s eyes widen slightly at that. Robbie doesn’t know why he somehow seems to keep pulling rank with James the last few days. But what the hell does he mean he’s feeling _supervised?_ He doesn’t want Robbie to watch him with Bradshaw, is that it? Doesn’t want Robbie to spot what’s really going on. Robbie makes a last effort to hold back his own views on this. He’ll warrant James knows full well he should’ve waited until this was over before starting anything up with Bradshaw. And what’s Robbie going to do, after all, if James flat-out refuses to acknowledge that? He’s hardly about to do anything that would betray the situation to Innocent.

Best course of action now is to keep things from deteriorating any further and not get James wound up before tonight. He’ll need to have all his wits about him, after all.

“D’you want to head off home now?” Robbie offers instead. “Have a break before you’ve to be back here later?”

James looks at him and shrugs, rather helplessly. But he doesn’t delay much over finishing up and heading off, all the same.

 

===

 

Although they’re meeting at the station, it’s to spilt into pairs. Robbie and Grainger—who have been briefly instructed to “wear black” as part of their final instructions this afternoon, presumably to fit in with the bouncers who get to host them in their office—can realistically share a car and James is to head off with Bradshaw.

Robbie’s not particularly pleased to find himself waiting in the station car park with Bradshaw, who’s uncommunicative and seems a bit tightly wound. James isn’t late, Robbie was just early and Bradshaw must’ve been even earlier so there’s no need at all for this ostentatious glancing at his watch that he’s persisting in. God, Robbie’s going to have stop being so petty about all this.

There’s James now, anyway, locking his own car and making his way over to them in the still-bright light of the very late summer’s evening.

Robbie’s seen him in jeans like these before. It’s not really the jeans. But even Robbie can see that the t-shirt James has on isn’t just a t-shirt. In the way that a suit that James wears is not the same as a suit that Robbie wears. That’s something designer and pricey. How come, if he’s seen James at the gym, shirtless, then this t-shirt which isn’t tight, as such, just sort of fitted—how come that makes him look—is it his arms? He’s seen James’s arms bare, so why should they look like that emerging from short sleeves? How does a t-shirt do that, makes his muscles look—not defined but just strong. He looks very strong. Which should be reassuring in the circumstances, nothing else, with what he’s trying to do. Trying to infiltrate a drugs ring in a sting operation—it’s no wonder James looks so tense and silent.

Robbie, pulled back out of himself by the instinctive need to ease that tension in James, is about to attempt a reassuring quip that might find its way across the chasm that all this has levered between them, when he realises that Bradshaw is eyeing James. What the hell is he doing? Running his eyes up and down _James_ like that as if he has some sort of a flaming _right_ to—oh, he’s assessing how he’s dressed, whether he’ll fit in. Still, though, “ _Bradshaw,_ ” says Robbie, drawing his attention away from James. It must come out a lot firmer than he’d intended because both Bradshaw and James turn mildly surprised, enquiring looks towards him. And then Robbie finds he needs to come up with something else to say to add to that. Nice outfit? Because Bradshaw is dressed just as well, really, as James is. Well, his shirt is different but he looks like he won’t stick out amongst all these young folk.

“You reckon you’ve got any leads on this yet?” Robbie asks.

He doesn’t pay much attention to Bradshaw’s response. Robbie can’t wait for this case to be over so Bradshaw can get his own flaming sergeant and do whatever the hell he likes with him, and Robbie can extract James from all this and get him back to normal, back to good old-fashioned murders. Murders that require suits to solve. That’d be best. Less distracting.

Then James can do whatever he likes in his own time.

 

===

 

“They your boys there? I can focus in a bit on them with this one.”

Robbie reckons the head of security is not best pleased to have their company for the evening in this small, hot office, the walls of which seem to almost vibrate with the noise of that music, but it’s not like he’d have had much say in the matter. Robbie had gathered from Grainger on the drive over that the owner of this club is very keen to facilitate the police in any of their efforts to stamp out drug use here “—which means he thinks we should be doing more already when it’s his lads that’re somehow letting the stuff get in in the first place,” Grainger had grumbled.

“Great,” says Grainger now.

 _Or not,_ thinks Robbie, suddenly, _you could just keep it back at this angle and we can keep an eye from a distance._

But the picture jumps a little and there’s James and Colin on screen, in black-and-white, at the edge of that dance floor, with Colin’s hand on James’s shoulder, and James dipping his head, the way he does, to hear him. Colin’s pulling himself towards James, using James’s shoulder, to say something in his ear, and then James—James is lifting his head, actually giving that rare quick laugh of his, it looks like. He’s genuinely amused, it seems to Robbie. Well, at least someone’s enjoying themselves.

And as Robbie watches, Colin circles an arm around James’s waist, pulling him that bit closer again, as James turns his head to watch the clubbers dancing. Probably just a decoy, just making sure no-one’s noticing that they’re watching certain people. James is just doing his job in the way that Robbie’s industrious, dedicated sergeant has always done what’s asked of him. And this is an important job he's doing, God knows, and he’s doing it well, and Bradshaw isn’t doing badly either, seeming perfectly comfortable with making advances to James, so they can just stand there and blend in well and be in a perfect position to observe now.

And then Colin turns towards James again but this time he’s moving in for a kiss.

Grainger is highly amused. “Fairly convincing couple they make, don’t they?” he asks Robbie, casting a quick sideways grin at him before returning his vigilance to the monitors. Robbie says nothing at all. “I mean—I could’ve guessed Colin would be wholehearted about his cover, but he’s doing pretty well there. Colin’s as straight as they come—”

“Don’t be such a flaming throwback,” Robbie snaps at him. Does Grainger think Bradshaw is just labelled as straight, stuck in a box in Grainger’s head and can’t be attracted to any man, ever, can’t be attracted to James, just because of that?

Grainger is looking at him startled. “Colin’s—”

“You shouldn’t be on this case with attitudes like that,” Robbie informs him flatly. “I’ve left my phone in the car.” Although he probably doesn’t need it. It’s not like James seems likely to call him now. But he could do with a moment away from this hot, confining booth and the grimace of the security man as he focuses on the screens and tries to ignore the two of them now. And from Grainger, who’s looking at him, surprised.

“Lewis—”

It can wait, whatever it is. Robbie manoeuvres past him and out the door, pulling it shut behind him and finding himself in a throng of clubbers instead. He pushes past them, not that politely, and out to the relative peace of the car park.

As straight as they come. Jesus. It’s no bloody wonder Davis doesn’t want people of Robbie and Grainger’s generation on a case like this with those flaming attitudes. There’s a tightness in Robbie’s chest which must be pure frustration at Grainger, at people like Grainger who are so bloody blinkered, who don’t see that obviously James and Bradshaw, thrown together by this case, are attracted to each other, that they’ve actually begun something together.

And it’s pure anger he feels at Grainger now, who can’t see that that’s obviously a good thing for James, who deserves someone like that, someone nearer his own age, someone who can actually get to him to relax and laugh like that in a setting that’s made for people of James’s age. Someone who knows how to kiss another man like that, without hesitancy.

He sincerely doesn’t want to go back into that booth and watch James and Colin any further, and, Christ, he’s that distracted that he’s walked past his own car. He turns abruptly to go back, still attempting to get a lid on his feelings here. Which must be why he doesn’t see the reversing taillights of another car before it starts to suddenly swing out of its space.

 

===

 

It’s a strange feeling of pressure on his arm that seems to wake Robbie.

There’s a petite brunette woman bending over him—it’s a doctor. It’s a blood pressure cuff on his arm. He’s in a hospital bed and Jesus Christ, his head—and James, looking very pale, is standing back against the wall, apparently giving the doctor space in this small room.

His eyes fasten on Robbie’s.

Robbie watches him, as best he can, while the doctor summons a nurse from somewhere close by. James stays quiet, his back against the wall, while Robbie replies to the doctor’s queries and submits to the nurse’s other checks. He learns the extent of his injuries, an actual minor head wound, now bandaged, as well as a suspected, mild closed head injury—which Robbie translates as a concussion—and his eyes stay on James.

“Come over here,” Robbie says hoarsely once the medical staff have departed for now. James comes over and drops into the chair that’s already right beside the bed. He’s still in his t-shirt and jeans. His posture is not in the least bit relaxed. Robbie wonders how long he’s been sitting there already tonight.

“ _Do_ you want some water? James asks. “I know you told her not just yet but you don’t sound…”

That’s got nothing to do with thirst, how Robbie’s voice sounds. James looks absolutely wretched. Robbie shakes his head. Oh, Christ, that was a mistake. And he can see from the further unhappiness in James’s eyes that his pain has been fully registered.

“Shouldn’t you be—” Robbie’s waving hand gesture is meant to mean _taking down some criminals, making a drugs bust, entering deeper into the realm of coupledom with Colin Bradshaw._

"When the rumour spread that there was a police car outside in the car park one of the clubbers that we’d been primed to keep an eye on panicked, and he tried to dispose of the pills down the toilet in the gents. We nabbed him. Drugs Squad will be working on him to get what information they can now.”

God, all of this, the supposed need for a sophisticated sting operation, and it only took one easily spooked pusher and a flashing blue light. Well, who knows what the man they’ve detained will be willing or able to tell them but it’s certainly something and James is effectively outed and his part in this over already. This whole operation has all been pretty unnecessary though, and what it’s done to him and James. Or what Robbie’s reactions to it have done...but James is continuing to fill him in on what he’s missed.

“Then once we got outside, I saw why the uniforms had been called—because—you’d been—” He stops abruptly. They regard each other for a moment. Then James starts again, pretty jerkily. “Grainger said—you were quite angry when you left to get your phone. Quite distracted—”

“Aye. Well. He’s probably right if what he’s getting at is that I wasn’t paying that much attention to the cars.”

There’s a swell of utterly misery in James’s eyes. “You were watching us, weren’t you? I knew you had a problem with it. Me going further than you thought I should. I just didn’t seem able to stop—”

Robbie finds he can be more generous here than he thought. He can be gentle in supporting James, because his sergeant looks so wretched and he’s done nothing to feel so guilty for really. “That’s what it’s like when you’re attracted to each other, lad, there’s no harm in that.”

 _“No_ , able to stop—pushing at the case. I wanted it over and done tonight. Colin was just dead keen that it went well, he’s been keeping at me, wanting to plan and strategise and work out a convincing cover all week.”

Robbie stays quite still, James’s increasingly withdrawn demeanour over the last few days suddenly appearing in a rather different light. James going out clubbing with Bradshaw unexpectedly with the rather odd rationale of developing their cover. Bradshaw over at James’s flat last night…. “Has he been _pressuring_ you?”

“No. No, not like that—he just—he’s an obsessive planner, wanting to go over every contingency, repeatedly. And keep practising our cover in ways I didn’t think we’d even need. Like the night he insisted we go out clubbing together. It seemed—excessive to me. He wouldn’t listen. It got frustrating. And exhausting. But I could handle it.”

He couldn’t, though, could he? James thinks he’s handled this, by giving in to some obsessive need of Bradshaw’s to control this case, but he’s endured it, not handled it. Robbie feels heartsick at the thought of the week his sergeant has just spent.

But James, thinking he’s putting Robbie’s mind at rest, is continuing. “And he needed this case to go well, he said. He wants a decent reference from Innocent. He’s planning on moving up North to be with his fiancée soon and he’s afraid Innocent won’t take too kindly to that when he’s just applied for and got the Inspector’s position here.” Christ, that’s no sort of a justification. But he obviously got James, in all his kind-heartedness, on board with him that way too, by confiding in him.

And Innocent will privately take a pretty dim view of that—Bradshaw having kept quiet about his plans to move on while Oxfordshire invested their time and resources in getting him through his Inspector’s course. But he’s a worse fool if he thinks she won’t give him a fair reference based on his work. Robbie resolves to have a quiet but very strong word with Innocent, all the same, whenever that transfer has gone through, that someone will want to keep a close eye that Bradshaw doesn’t come over heavy-handed with his new sergeant again with all that single-minded ambition.

Although it’ll be nothing like as strong as the word he’ll be having with Bradshaw himself once he gets him on his own, safely away from James’s earshot. But as for James—

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

James’s shrug isn’t very enlightening but the misery in his eyes as he looks back at Robbie somehow is. They’d hardly managed to communicate this week once all of this had been thrown between them. And James had wanted to handle this himself, hadn’t he? Show he was well capable. Something had raised his hackles and stirred all his stubborn immovableness on this. Which, come to think of it—Robbie himself had thrown him by questioning his ability to handle himself on this case with Innocent—ah, hell.

James seems fairly determined to take far more than his fair share of the blame for this. “I should’ve listened to you, anyway. I know you were just trying to warn me not to go too far for a case. It was just difficult—and then you had to watch us. I mean—watching me and Colin when we were—kissing— _Is_ that why you were bothered? Why you went outside?” Robbie finds he can’t really deny it. And James reaches out a hand towards him and then stops himself, pulling back at the last moment, distraught, before Robbie can even feel his touch. “And now you’re—”

“Now I’m fine. I’m fine, lad. No lasting damage done. Ah, James.” For James is shaking his own head in mute dissent now. “None of this is your fault at all. C’mere now.” And he reaches out himself, just meaning to draw James’s head down beside him for a moment, offering a clumsy embrace. It’s the best he can manage for now, propped up as high as he is on these pillows, but not really feeling able to sit upright.

James slides right up onto the bed, sitting on the edge and buries his face in Robbie’s shoulder. That t-shirt is dead soft, Robbie takes in, as he lets his own hand rest gently on James’s back, and James’s shoulders, as he sits quite still now under Robbie’s gently moving hand, are just as firm to the touch as they looked. Then Robbie finds his hand going to the back of James’s neck instead, as James shows no inclination at all to lift his head back up. The hairs right at the nape of his neck are dead soft too, Robbie’s stroking thumb tells him _._

And a moment later, Robbie is so taken aback to feel a slight dampness on his own neck that it takes him a second or two to realise what’s happening. “Ah, stop that now, you,” he mumbles at James, sliding his hand up from his sergeant’s neck, right into his hair. “Telling you, I’m fine.”

James still doesn’t raise his head at all, but there’s a soft, penitent kiss delivered into Robbie’s neck.

Oh _. “_ Nothing for you to take on so about,” Robbie soothes the back of his head. There’s another kiss.

“Absolutely fine,” Robbie says, experimentally. And there’s another kiss. This one seems to last a little longer.

“Be right as rain before you know it—” he says slowly. And this time James does sit up, looking straight at Robbie.

“Head like an anvil, me,” Robbie adds, slightly breathless just from the fierce way he’s being looked at. And James bends down and kisses him full on the mouth, as gently as if Robbie might break apart under the touch of his lips. Robbie returns the kiss with an ardour that seems to tell him he doesn’t have to be quite so gentle as that, because James deepens it, although still very tenderly, still without requiring Robbie to move his own head. He reaches one arm over to brace himself on the far side of Robbie’s body, the other hand finding Robbie’s somehow. Robbie, feeling like he’s finally relinquishing a burden that’s been weighing him down for God only knows how long, just kisses him right back.

Once they stop, once James has delivered a last, lingering, still-careful kiss and drawn back, he sits up a little again, just looking at Robbie. Robbie feels a grin breaking out across his own face. He makes no attempt to restrain it. “You’ve got your colour back,” he offers.

James, his eyes alight, presses those lips, those highly kissable lips, together, trying to keep a straight face. “So have you, a bit,” he says. “Although I think it’s partly the bandage that makes your face look paler—” His eyes are shadowing over a bit again already. Robbie’s just not having that. Not now he knows how to stop that miserable look. He raises his arm again, in invitation, and James drops his head right back down, softly, on Robbie’s shoulder with a sigh, turning his face back into Robbie’s neck. He shifts a little on the bed, carefully, making sure he’s not resting any of his weight against Robbie’s side. “You sure this doesn’t hurt you?” he asks in muffled tones.

“No, I reckon it’s just what the doctor ordered,” Robbie tells him and he hears a chuckle at the blatant untruth of that. James knows full well that the medical staff are unlikely to take as warm a view as Robbie is of how his sergeant is lying against him, careful though he’s being. Unluckily, it seems they’re about to find out just what the doctor does think as from the angle he’s at; Robbie can already see the top of a brunette head approaching in the small window of the door. He’s loath to disturb his oblivious sergeant, so warm against him, and especially as those small kisses to his neck seem to be recommencing, in a very promising fashion, as James starts to give his full attention to finding particular spots to kiss without moving Robbie’s head. But the door is opening now. Except it’s not a doctor standing there.

“Lewis.” Innocent’s tone is very dry. Robbie, staring at her, can’t quite make sense of her expression between his own shock and the distraction of James who has just frozen in place against him at the sound of her voice, his face still hidden in Robbie’s neck. “Sergeant _Hath_ away _,_ ” adds Innocent, in interested tones, when James fails to move.

James propels himself upwards so fast off the bed that Robbie is quite thankful that his unfortunate head wasn’t in his path. He lands up standing very upright, gazing straight down at Innocent. She isn’t looking at James, though.

“A word, Robbie,” she says very pleasantly. When nothing happens, she turns the full force of her gaze on James and elevates her eyebrows. But James stays put and casts a slightly desperate glance at Robbie. He doesn’t quite grasp what Innocent’s main concern is here, Robbie sees. He’s thinking that he should be staying to take his part of the almighty furore he fears is coming. Robbie, with his own glance, sends him on his way. James goes very reluctantly, meeting Innocent’s look with a slight tinge of defiance as he skirts around her—bloody hell, that’s not going to help—but he does go and he clicks the door shut behind him.

“Well—” Innocent starts.

“Ma’am—” But she holds up a hand to stop him.

“First things first, inspector. Concussion, I believe, is the worst of it?”

Robbie makes a noise of assent. Frankly, with everything that seems to be happening within the past while, he feels that his concussion is assuming the proportions of a pretty minor detail. Innocent might agree because she certainly spares little time on that. “Good. Well, that was the original purpose of my visit but events seem to have rather overtaken us, don’t they? So if you’re up to a full and frank discussion?”

Regretfully, Robbie sees no room to protest that he isn’t, delicate state of his head notwithstanding, given the compromising position that she’s just discovered him in.

“Then perhaps you could kindly enlighten me as to just how long you and Sergeant Hathaway have been—” And she pauses, letting her eyebrows do the work for her once more.

“We haven’t,” Robbie informs her quite truthfully. Although he can hardly blame her for the highly sceptical look she sends right back at him. He sees no help for it now. “I mean—we just started, now, very recently, so to speak,” he admits. _And marvellous ruddy timing you have too, ma’am,_ he feels like adding.

He’s a bit distracted by James, who is appearing, disappearing and reappearing through that small window in the door. His height means it’s perfectly possible to see his face, and his expression seems quite set. He must be pacing back and forth outside Robbie’s room, like some sort of guard. Which would be a lot more touching if it wasn’t for the fact that the only threat Robbie needs protecting from is currently right here inside the room with him. Is James anxious, though? Not just about Innocent and what she and Robbie are saying; is he getting anxious about what’s just happened with Robbie?

Robbie shifts his head rather sharply on the pillow, to try and see around Innocent at the foot of his bed and read James’s demeanour better, as he reappears. A stab of pain lets him know what a very bad idea moving his head like that was. He feels his features contort as he suppresses a curse.

“Robbie. Could you _please_ —Oh, _God,”_ mutters Innocent, breaking off. Robbie can see her dilemma. She’s torn between her ire at his wandering attention and her realisation that she actually is restricted in letting her opinions loose here because of his condition—as his grimaces are now apparently reminding her.

“Sorry, ma’am. Concussion,” offers Robbie hopefully.

She gives him a look. It’s quite a look. She may feel restricted in what she can say, but her facial expressions continue to convey her thoughts about Robbie, at this particular moment, quite effectively. It seems best to get things over with in one awkward go. Robbie has, not through choice, sat through her seminar with senior officers covering all the exhaustive details of her internal policies about fraternisation. It had just never crossed his mind that he’d personally be in a position to activate them.

“Nothing untoward happened with Hathaway until just now, ma’am. I haven’t been keeping anything quiet. I understand he can’t be my sergeant anymore. An’ I know you’ll have to ask him about a senior officer—making advances.” _And good luck to you having that conversation with James,_ he reflects, because he can quite clearly see exactly how well the implications of that will go down with James, once he grasps what Innocent will be asking him. Best drill it into James that it’s just procedure, not what Innocent personally thinks about Robbie.

Because her expression has actually softened slightly, looking at him now. “Well, the actual details can probably be ironed out when you’re walking wounded, at least,” she concedes. “All right, Robbie, I’ll just—” And she’s leaving, he realises in relief.

“If you could just send Hathaway back in, ma’am,” he can’t help asking. Because James has disappeared from view altogether now, and since Robbie is apparently stuck here in this room for the foreseeable, he can’t have James going off, anxiety-stricken over what’s just happened, and Robbie not being able to reach him. Come to think of it, Robbie hasn’t even got his phone.

Innocent, muttering something that sounds remarkably like _oh, as if I could stop him,_ heads for the door and, to Robbie’s relief, it certainly isn’t long before James returns. In fact, Robbie barely has time to start wondering why Innocent had appeared more annoyed than shocked to catch them together before James slips back in.

“Thought I’d linger round the corner till I saw her leave so she didn’t delay me coming back in,” he explains succinctly. Robbie grins at him, appreciating the foresight, but his appreciation doesn’t last long.

“Well, there you are, Hathaway,” comes a voice from behind James. “We seemed to miss each other there? I had a distinct feeling this might be where you were.” Bloody hell, she’s back.

“Ma’am.” James retreats further into the room to allow her in, his expression conceding the entrapment.

“There are various loose ends in this case, sergeant, that you’ll appreciate are in need of your input.” James looks dismayed. But Innocent is continuing: “First thing, tomorrow morning, I’ll expect to see you at the station. So _kindly_ don’t get any ideas into your head about attempting to stay here all night. Inspector Lewis does not appear in need of an overnight vigil, and some sleep would perhaps benefit his recovery?” She elicits a reluctant nod from James. “You, from what I’ve seen so far, appear most likely to be a distinctively disruptive influence—”

“Ma’am—” James is quite horrified at this reference to his activities when she discovered them. Robbie strives to keep his facial muscles composed in a neutral and attentive expression.

“And I want you at work, tomorrow, adequately rested and more suitably clothed than this, as further evidence that you went _home.”_ Robbie wonders suddenly, hearing the tone she uses to finish, at her real motivation. Perhaps she can still see the after-effects of James’s shock and distress, so vivid on his face when Robbie first awoke.

Sometimes, after all these years, she still wrong-foots him when her underlying concern for him or James suddenly emerges right when he’s expecting her ire.

“I’ll see he gets off shortly, ma’am,” he promises, ignoring James’s sideways glance of betrayal.

“You’ll be off for a least a week, Robbie,” she informs him. “No, I don’t know what your doctor will say, but that’s the minimum time you’ll be taking before you get anywhere near _my_ active-duty roster. Sergeant, once your part in this case is put to bed tomorrow, I believe you happen to have leave due?” Her tone lets Robbie know that James will be taking that leave. She probably wants some time to sort out the mess they’ve handed her tonight. James seems to grasp that too. Or perhaps he just knows that he’s not in the best position to disagree with anything much that she’s saying right now.

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs.

“At least there’s a vacancy or two for a sergeant to be reassigned,” she says half to herself. “Gentlemen.” She nods at them both as she turns to go.

James, having somehow grasped Robbie’s unfortunate propensity to move his head without thinking, immediately puts a hand up to cup Robbie’s face to stop him from nodding at her retreating back in automatic response. Then he sinks back down on the side of the bed again, lowering his hand to take Robbie’s. He’s not ruddy anxious at all, Robbie realises, with relief.

“Fuck,” he says to Robbie.

“Yeah,” Robbie agrees.

“And where were we?” James enquires hopefully. “Before we were so _rudely_ interrupted?”

Robbie chuckles. “ _You_ were about to head off home.” James looks distinctly put out. But he does look shattered, Robbie sees, assessing him up close again now. And a bit shellshocked still. It’s no wonder Innocent was so adamant. “She’s going to put you with Grainger, I reckon,” he informs James ruefully.  “That’s the sergeant vacancy.”

But James frowns. “Grainger’s not so bad. Earlier, in the car park—he held me back—” He’s pulling his arm back against his body, a reflexive gesture, as if it almost pains him and Robbie, his shoulders tightening in indignation already, wonders how hard Grainger had gripped James’s arm to hold him back. He doesn’t have to wonder long.

“The driver of that car,” James informs him in very controlled tones. “The uniforms breathalysed him. The paramedics were there by then, putting you on the stretcher, but you were still unconscious—” and there’s a slight waver on that word _still_ that tells Robbie that James had been right there throughout the wait for the paramedics, waiting in vain for Robbie to wake up “—and I could see that the driver had failed. Grainger was just decent about it. He kept holding me back and saying did I want to risk the conviction, risk letting him get away with it, by doing something satisfactory but stupid, that was the way he put it. Then he sent me off in the ambulance with you.”

There’s a cold anger in his eyes, recalling it, that tells Robbie exactly why Grainger might have been forced into almost hurting James.

But Grainger had known what to say, to stop James landing himself in trouble. Robbie wonders if there’s anything else left he could have got wrong this past week. And when it eventually emerges why Innocent has separated Robbie and James—well, that’ll shed further light on all of this for Grainger, Robbie thinks ruefully. But he doesn’t have long to think about Grainger. Innocent had left the door open when she took her leave and Robbie has been vaguely aware over the past few minutes of the cadence of a familiar tone amongst the indecipherable rise and fall of lowered voices at what must be the nurse’s station, out of his line of sight.

If he wasn’t so preoccupied with James he’d have worked it out sooner because someone else is appearing now.

“Robbie.” It’s Laura this time. And that familiar rhythm of speech was Laura in professional mode. And nice as it usually is to see her—what are these nurses actually at? Do visiting hours mean nothing in this place? But Laura’s badge makes visiting hours a mere detail to her when it comes to gaining access to the wards here, Innocent is a law onto herself and James, who is getting up off the bed again now to let Laura over to Robbie—well, God only knows what James told the medical staff.

But even though it’s only Laura, Robbie somehow can’t seem to take much more of this tonight. Laura seems to spot that. She comes over and stands beside the bed, looking hard at him. “You okay?” she asks.

She doesn’t look particularly convinced at his confirmation that he is.

“You’re in good hands,” she tells him, “and they’re happy enough with you so far, you should be fine. You need to rest, though. It’s not an insignificant trauma, Robbie. They thought it might be worse. That’s how you managed to land yourself back at the Radcliffe.”

Robbie hadn’t even thought to wonder why he wasn’t in some hospital more local to that club. And rest does sound like a good idea. Not that he’s about to admit it.

“Honestly… ”And she bends to drop a quick kiss on his cheek, giving him one more very direct look. Then she turns her attention to James. But she doesn’t seem to much like what she sees looking at him, either. “Come on, I’ll take _you_ home. There were distinct mutterings at the nurse’s station about ejecting you firmly at Robbie’s next check. Regardless of the—oh, what was it, now? Urgent police business that you needed to question him about the moment he woke?”

James eyes the ceiling, not looking particularly repentant at having his tactics exposed. “Miscommunication,” he informs that overhead florescent light that really does just seems too bright and glaring to Robbie now.

“I’d save that for someone who’d believe you,” Laura advises him. Robbie attempts a grin at her, but she’s still eyeing James, waiting for his focus to return to her.

“Don’t you want to stay a bit longer?” James demurs, giving in and grimacing at her.

“No,” she informs him. “I came to see for myself that he’s still in one piece and so he is. But good try.”

But James, Robbie can see, just doesn’t want to go. He’s had a hell of a night. Probably hasn’t managed to balance himself again yet despite things really being all right now. That’s why he’s proving immune to Innocent, and even Laura, saying that Robbie needs rest. Robbie doesn’t really want to imagine what it would have been like to come out of that noisy pulsing cavern of the club, high from the adrenaline of the evening and the relief and success of making the arrest, into the outside world, and then come across an accident scene and realise who was involved.

“Give us a minute, would you?” Robbie says, half-apologetically, to Laura.

“One,” she agrees. But she not only leaves, she closes the door with a firm click.

Robbie wants nothing more now than to be in a bigger bed and slide his arm under James, pull him in close right against him for the night. James can be an oddly undemanding presence when you’re het up. Dead soothing, really. Robbie certainly doesn’t him to leave. But he can also see what Innocent was getting at. James needs some sort of distraction from all tonight’s trauma and he needs to be sent home. Robbie reckons he knows exactly how to entice him.

“Innocent’s right, you know, you’d be one hell of a distraction. Raising me pulse and everything so you are. And that’s one of the things they watch for after a head injury—high blood pressure." Robbie is not, after all, inexperienced with this. His cricketing undercover stint had involved a concussion too, come to think of it. “You’ll land up having me stuck in here all the longer if you stick around. And it’d be nice for us to get me home to me own bed, wouldn’t it now? Be that bit more—private.”

James stares at him.

“Yeah?” he manages after a moment. He seems to be aiming for a casual tone but his voice is a little husky.

Robbie remembers not to nod.

“I’ll come back and get you tomorrow when they let you go home then—”

“You’re not to worry about that, you’ll have your hands full in work, from the sounds of it. Just get shot of this case and finish up, yeah? And then I’ll see you in the evening.” Robbie sincerely hopes that he’ll be out of here well before then. “Cause it sounds like we have both have a week off, you know, after that, one way or another?”

James’s face slowly breaks into a delighted grin. He mustn’t be thinking straight if he hadn’t grasped that. And this is surely not what Innocent intended, giving them a week off together as some sort of reward for creating an administrative headache for her and forcing her hand, making her break up a partnership with a fairly bloody good case-closure rate. But Robbie has never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“Hathaway.” Laura has levered the door back open and her expression speaks volumes.

James wavers, it’s almost imperceptible, but Robbie reckons he can read what’s running across his mind all the same—the thought of kissing Robbie goodnight in front of Laura is somehow a step further than being found by his chief super thoroughly embarked on much the same enterprise. James won’t say a word to Laura, of course. He’ll defer to Robbie’s relationship with her and let Robbie tell her. But he’s looking at Robbie rather ruefully. Robbie delivers his best flirtatious wink at him. That seems to do the trick.

 James, rather startled, heads over to Laura’s impatient presence, casting one more quizzical look back over his shoulder at Robbie as he goes. Robbie grins to himself, knowing full well the source of James’s confusion. The lad obviously hadn’t expected this talk of Robbie’s bed yet, hadn’t thought Robbie’s interest in this part of their relationship would more than match his own. He’ll see. Robbie plans to thoroughly disperse this bloody frustrating talk that’s been floating around all week about older blokes and their need for chemical assistance. Thoroughly.

“Nice shirt, sergeant,” he hears Laura observe as she and James depart. The door closes on James’s murmured protest of a response.

 

===

 

“Hi.” James is looking shyly pleased with himself.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Got it all done a bit early, after all. Told you I’d pick you up.”

 “An’ I told you not to worry. Laura said she’d drop me home.” But Robbie can’t hide his pleasure, all the same. James just shrugs, still grinning. He looks a fair bit better.

Robbie’s phone has mysteriously appeared, dropped off at the nurses’ station early this morning. He rather suspects Grainger may have retrieved it and sent it over, someone presumably having had the foresight to relieve Robbie of his car keys before he was dispatched here last night. His car is presumably at the nick.

The phone had initially seemed very promising for sending a series of surreptitious texts to Laura, in an attempt to get her to wield her influence and get him sprung from here some time today. Robbie hadn’t planned to spend a moment longer than necessary in this bed even if he is strangely exhausted. But Laura had proved frustratingly immune to his pleas, informing him progressively throughout the morning that she wasn’t his personal doctor, that if he’d had a scan then obviously he’d have to wait for the consultant to come on duty to read it, and that she had no intention of treading on any toes or engaging in any battles against a perfectly reasonable system on his behalf.

Robbie doesn’t think he’s a bad patient, as such. Val had always said he was fine when he was ill—well, as long as he was really ill. Although, come to think of it, she’d also said that it was when he started to recover that he became a nightmare. And Robbie is beginning to grasp the unwelcome prospect that this will involve an actual recovery. This is nothing like having a concussion in the good old days when you could be knocked out one night and back in work the next morning. He’d decided, on reflection, though, not to express that view to the nurses since he was fairly sure that Laura’s texted exhortation to _tell them that then and see how far it gets you_ was actually an attempt to have the nurses give him short shrift on her own behalf. But she’d offered to take him home once his one-man campaign for release finally bore fruit, as she’d put it.

Except now, just as release finally beckons, here’s James. He’s considerately bearing the change of clothes that Robbie keeps at the office too.

And James seems far more at ease with himself than he has all week and quite keen to stay when a nurse appears to run through the final formalities. The nurse also seems happier to have someone in a rather better state of health than Robbie to discharge all this exhaustive information to. There does seem quite a lot to have to focus on. As she processes through the written instructions about recommendations and warning signs with an attentive James, Robbie, with a slightly ominous feeling about how seriously James is going to take all this, is about to tell her not to encourage him when she gets to yet another question for Robbie: “And do you live alone or is there someone who can—”

“He won’t be alone,” James informs her. But he sounds shyly pleased, saying that. Ah. And just like that, Robbie knows to bite his tongue and make an effort to take any unnecessary fuss that may be headed his way on the chin, this time. Seems a small price to pay in the circumstances.

After the nurse departs, Robbie is mainly preoccupied with the welcome prospect of getting dressed and out of this bed now, but once that’s accomplished, he finds it’s an effort to ignore the slight dizziness that’s assailing him now that he’s standing upright for a reasonable amount of time. Sitting on the edge of the bed for a moment seems like a good move. Then he feels James drop down beside him and turns to find that even more welcome developments are taking precedence, as James is eyeing him in a way that says he won’t be waiting much longer before he claims his kiss.

It’s not quite as careful as last night. Christ, at least there’s one area where James isn’t being over-cautious. The lad’s not helping with this dizziness at all, as Robbie mildly informs his unrepentant sergeant when he finally desists.

“They never said not to do that,” James says. “I’ve got your list of risk factors and warning signs here now, and thoroughly kissing you is most definitely not on it. In fact, there’s a whole lot of leeway they’ve left, really—”

Robbie is slightly disappointed that Laura chooses that moment to finally arrive, but regardless of what she suspects, or thinks she knows, he won’t be finding out what exactly James means by that now until he gets home. James is standing to greet her.

Laura just shakes her head. “All that pestering and turns out you have a chauffeur ready and waiting here all along. I might’ve known you only wanted me for my medical expertise.”

“He only just got here,” Robbie protests.

Laura addresses herself to James. “You have my sincere sympathies. Bad enough being pulled into work on a Saturday, isn’t it, without being unmercifully pestered by text? Though at least you don’t have to keep changing your gloves every bloody time…”

“And I’ve got the week off now,” James informs her.

Laura glances from him to Robbie. “Just as well,” she says after a moment, thoughtfully. “Has he actually grasped what recovery from this involves?”

“Oi,” protests Robbie. “Right here, I am.”

Laura ignores him. “He’ll tell you that he’s been bashed over the head before with no ill-effects, but he was unconscious for a significant enough period this time—what’s wrong ?” she asks, her expression suddenly changing.

Robbie looks at James. He’s gone a bit pale again. “All right,” he says gruffly to Laura, “no need to go over all that again.” Laura seems to grasp what’s going on.

“He’ll be fine, James,” she says gently. “I’m just trying to get it through to him that he won’t instantly bounce back. But he’s fine.” James just nods at her. Robbie feels a bit stricken again at the thought of the struggle James must have gone through last night. Robbie had really had the easier ordeal, himself, being unaware of it all. No wonder James is drawing straight back into Robbie’s space every chance he gets. Even now, with Laura here, he’s standing very close to the edge of the bed. Very close to Robbie.

Laura seems to be leaving them to it already. “Well, seeing as I’m now surplus to requirements—”

“No,” James informs her. “Never that.” They both look at him. That’s one of those statements which would probably be a joking remark from someone else but is perfectly serious coming from James.

The smile Laura suddenly gives him is very warm. “All right,” she concedes after a moment. “Put it this way. You take him home then and I’ll check in on you both tomorrow. Make sure he’s still recovering okay and put your mind at rest—and check he’s not actually driving you up the wall in the process.” It sounds about right to Robbie but he’s not about to admit that she may have the measure of him.

James nods at her again. She casts one more look at Robbie before she goes. It’s the type of look that you give someone when there’s not much need for words. James’s straightforward remark has rather struck her, Robbie can see. And he’d bet anything that it really won’t be a surprise to Laura when he tells her about him and James. He can picture her rolling her eyes at him if he tries to work up to it, actually.

“Home?” James suggests, raising his eyebrows at him. Robbie suddenly remembers that yearning from last night to have James right beside him in his bed.

“Aye. We can stop off though on the way—”

“You’re not having takeaway. It says good nutrition here. I’ll cook—actually we will need to stop off, won’t we, you won’t exactly have many fresh ingredients. But they said no alcohol too, incidentally. Just in case you were thinking of beer—” Christ, it’s a taste of things to things to come.

“No,” says Robbie patiently. “Get your stuff, yeah? Stay over? Just told them I wouldn’t be by meself now, didn’t you?”

“Oh.” That’s stopped him in his tracks. “Yes,” James says with certainty. And Robbie suddenly finds himself the recipient of that irresistible smile of pure delight.

 

_Epilogue_

 

They’re sitting on a tree-shaded bench where the Botanic Gardens border onto the Cherwell.  Getting here has involved a pleasant wander through the gardens. It’s a good place to be on an afternoon like this, when the warmth of the day is now making itself properly felt. It may not be the Trout yet—and it won’t be for some time—but it runs a pretty close second at this particular moment.

Although Robbie is now beginning to wonder if James hasn’t chosen this spot purely for the opportunity to critique other folk’s punting technique. Its proximity to where the punts are moored means that none of the tourists have quite got the hang of it by the time they make their slightly nervous, haphazard way past.

James seems rather displeased that apparently most of them show evidence of having failed to take in the basic advice they would have been given.

He’s managed to do again what he’s been doing all week, unobtrusively giving Robbie just what he could do with—in this case, somewhere quiet enough where they can still watch the goings on—just as the frustration of this whole sick leave period starts to get on top of him again. Because Robbie has been forced by now into an awareness of what Laura has been going on about with her talk of recovery time—he’s been stupidly tired and rather lacking in concentration this week. And he’s been told now that it’ll be another few weeks before he’s reviewed and hopefully cleared for active duty

It’s not the best timing when you're starting up something proper with someone much younger, someone who looks lithe and firm and full of quietly suppressed energy, even when lounging back on this bench beside you. Because even though Laura has made it perfectly clear why this particular injury has hit Robbie harder than before, and that his normal energy levels will return, and even though age didn’t come into her brief lecture—well, feeling like this does sort of make you feel older. Which should be a worry.

Except that James doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

The tree-shadowed sunlight plays across James’s features and he drops his head back and closes his eyes. Robbie takes the opportunity to watch him for a moment, unobserved. It’s quiet here and sort of private, what with the leafy canopy overhead and with the punters so occupied with attempting to navigate the challenge of this slightly deceptive bend. And James’s posture is that relaxed. This week off is certainly doing him no harm.

There’s a hand finding Robbie’s on the bench now and long, supple fingers twining themselves gently through his own.

It’s privately taken Robbie by surprise, the lack of effort it’s taken to form this week’s gentle domestic routine. For someone so complicated, the simplest little things seem to bring no small amount of pleasure to James. He’s been reluctant to leave Robbie much to his own devices in the evenings. He’s just been there, making himself at home in Robbie’s kitchen as naturally as if he’d been contemplating for ages just what he’d do if he had the go-ahead to cook for Robbie. And it turns out, as Robbie should have suspected, that the lad can properly cook. He can cook so well, in fact, that Robbie has to freely admit that he can make healthier ingredients than Robbie would ever choose taste very good. And then—well, then James just stays.

Robbie wasn’t quite sure at first if James was feeling the need to stay in order to make sure that Robbie really was all right at night. But he now increasingly thinks that James simply wants to stay. Robbie’s surely not objecting. Not when they’ve embarked on this slowly developing, thoroughly enjoyable, mutual quest to discover just how much of a pleasure sharing a bed with each other can be. And James will sometimes disappear off for the day, after making and sharing breakfast—and then sometimes there have been days like this instead.

Waking up with him there in the mornings has been its own pure pleasure, too.

So much so that Robbie finds he doesn’t actually want to keep missing out on that. And things will be pretty different when they both return to work, with two unpredictable schedules that won’t run concurrently. James will be top of the call-out rota when Robbie isn’t, and vice versa. Never mind this whole idea of a new sergeant—it’s enough to make moving towards retirement seem like something Robbie should keep in mind. Except that this enforced time off has brought home to him that he’s sincerely not ready to face up to full-time retirement yet. Or the prospect of a desk job. But he could think of taking more of a regular hours, training role, as Innocent had originally tried to steer him so very firmly towards years ago. Training up a new set of recruits. Staying on as a copper but having more time to call his own.

Innocent will be none too pleased if he requests that now. And it mightn’t be the best time exactly to ask her for a favour. But there are other factors here too that make looking for something not quite so much in the line of fire seem well worth considering.

Robbie thinks of James’s wretchedness when he came to, last week in the Radcliffe, and he knows he doesn’t much want to be the cause of that look again if he can help it. And then there’s the thought of it not being Robbie who’s the injured one—

“This working with other folk _—“_ Robbie starts. _“_ Well, we can anticipate what the other one’s at, can’t we? Made it easier to be one step ahead of anyone who’s going to try something. Going to take some getting used to, getting to know someone else well enough. You’ll have to be more on alert with a new partner.”

“Yeah,” says James, non-committal.

Robbie can hardly blame him if he’s reluctant to discuss this precise topic. But he needs to make this all a bit clearer to James now. He sort of owes it to him. _“_ I didn’t much fancy that last week—” he admits. “The idea of you heading into a risky situation with someone else as backup. Anyone else, really.”

“Mmm,” James agrees, opening his eyes just long enough now to send a sidelong glance at Robbie.

“I could’ve handled it all a bit better, mind.”

“Mmm,” James agrees, with his eyes shut again now, but with much more feeling. Robbie elbows him. It’s amazing how much the lad can get into one monosyllabic sound. James opens his eyes to gaze at him reproachfully.

“Wasn’t just you,” he says, relenting after a moment and closing his eyes again.

“Didn’t do great at this communicating lark, did we?” Laura, Robbie suspects, would be sorely tempted to knock both their heads together if she knew exactly what had gone on between them. Well, if it wasn’t for Robbie’s concussion.

James turns to look at him properly now, with a grin at the understatement. “I don’t know—we got there. In the end.”

“Aye, well. I’d prefer not to have to go through all that another time.” But that’s not really what Robbie means. Somehow the worst part of it for him, the part that bothers him almost the most still, is that James had felt unable to tell him what was going with Bradshaw. And Robbie may not have a handle yet on all the complicated reasons why that might have been, but at the end of the day—“If something like that is happening again—tell me, next time, yeah?”

James doesn’t look as convinced as Robbie would like. “But you won’t even be my boss any more. Really can’t have you fighting my battles for me round the nick. Wouldn’t be right, anyway, if I took advantage of having a relationship with a senior officer.”

It _is_ going to be dead strange, all the same, to have James around the nick and not have him as his sergeant. But Robbie needs to get across to him that this isn’t about work, as such. “I don’t mean that. I mean—tell me.”

James actually looks a little dubious, grimacing at him, as if he maybe doubts his own capacity to do that. He really isn’t quite used to this, is he? Relying on someone else to help a bit. Instead of using all these ideologies and morality systems in his own head to figure out what to do and just adhering to his own unforgiving standards for himself. All right. Small steps. Let him see over time now that he can let Robbie in like that.

Because this isn’t only about having to trust your partner’s safety to someone else. It’s the thought of James and the way that cases get to him, in ways that you have to know him well enough to be able to spot. But the more Robbie thinks about it, the more he realises that he doesn’t quite know which way James will even go—whether he’d be willing to rejoice Innocent’s heart and go for promotion now that being Robbie’s sergeant is somehow no longer holding him back. Or whether—

“Don’t much fancy the idea of working with someone else long-term anyway,” James confesses.

Ah. Because this job has always had a tentative hold on James and down the line it’s still hard to imagine him staying. Robbie might not be the only one contemplating that other options within the force with a less gruelling schedule might be no bad thing here. Or even options outside the force, when it comes to James. Either way, it’d be nice to be able to call their time their own. He’s beginning to get the feeling that they might have wasted enough of it already.

But—well, it seems a bit presumptuous to be making decisions based on their relationship at this early stage. Despite this week, he can’t be sure that James, so hard to read in some respects still, will be ready to just move ahead—

The breeze lifts the branches overhead again and the calls of another group on a slightly rocking punt come across the water. James starts to stroke his thumb rather absently against the side of Robbie’s hand now.

Robbie idly watches that punt and the rather unnecessary amount of ripples it seems to be creating on the water. The passengers dispense conflicting and unappreciated advice about how far to reach with the pole. That rouses James again. He tuts away beside Robbie. “Stance is all wrong,” he mutters. “They all forget that that _matters_ …”

“And you can do that, then, can you?”

“A bit—One summer at Cambridge, I had a job—taking the tourists out—”

This is delightful new information. "D’you wear one of those hats?”

“We had better hats in Cambridge,” James says loftily.

And that’s how he does it, Robbie realises—this is how James will let him in. He offers up little bits of his past for consideration under the guise of jokes or asides. Small, seemingly insignificant bits from someone else, but not from James. Robbie’s under no illusions that James’s slowly lifting reticence, his slow reveals, are as casual as they seem here. This is James, after his own fashion, entering gradually into this relationship with Robbie. And Robbie should’ve known—it’s the same way that James has let him in over the years, after all, seemingly giving just small pieces of himself and his past, but somehow in the process offering the whole of his warm loyal heart.

It hasn’t been a week at all, has it? It hasn’t taken a week to form what’s between them, what Robbie is only realising fully now that they’ve already got. It’s been years.

“We’ve got time to work it out now, though,” James offers. “What we both want to do about all this in work.” And he quietly lifts Robbie’s hand to press a quick kiss to it.

He’s right too.

Time. That’s exactly what they’ve got now. They’ve got each other and they’ve got time.

There’s the Cherwell making its way on down to join the Isis. There’s that breeze ruffling the leaves above them, and the branches lifting to let that leaf-patterned light play over both of them now. Most of all there’s that hand still holding Robbie’s and there’s James’s relaxed warmth so close beside him. There’s that sudden quick grin that he seems to level at Robbie for no particular reason these days and all that that summons up now. They’ve got time, they’ve got each other and they’ve got what’s turning out to be a really rather perfect summer’s day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: James quotes from _The Old Vicarage, Grantchester_ by Rupert Brooke when he’s contemplating Robbie’s stint as an undercover cricketer.
> 
> There’s an excellent set of pictures by Isagel (and no case spoilers) from the Morse episode _Deceived by Flight_ of young Sergeant Robbie Lewis thoroughly enjoying himself as a cricket player here: http://lewis-hathaway.dreamwidth.org/8481.html


End file.
